One Day - is Emma meant to be like this?

[AreolaGrande]

Have never read the book. Saw the film years ago but don't remember loads about it 😳.

Am on ep 3 of the Netflix show and Emma is just so bloody miserable and sour? She's vile to Dexter and I don't get why someone as charismatic as him would bother with her relentless negativity and moaning. I seem to remember Anne Hathaway's Emma having more about her? The connection between her Emma and Jim Sturgess's Dexter was much more believable?

Not sure I can be arsed persevering tbh.

Isn’t the idea that they both see something in the other person that no one else really does, and isn’t what they are on the surface? It’s like they recognise the true person behind all the social conditioning etc. That’s what I found really moving

@Theonlylonely It fits with the narrative of the book- plain Jane meets hot toff - opposites attract and all that (then Emma turns into a very beautiful lady herself!)

But Emma in the book was funny and quirky. Emma in the Netflix version is neither.

I found her funny! Maybe it’s my northern sense of humour. I also would not describe her as plain. Just not his usual type. She’s intelligent, funny and refuses to sleep with him. That’s what he’s attracted to.

I just thought it was a bit unbelievable that Dexter would be stopped in his tracks at the very sight of Emma on that first night. If they had met another way/via some other interaction then it wouldn't be so unbelievable.

After four years in uni, she knows who he is (swoon) and we are supposed to believe that he has suddenly noticed her for the first time and that she is his soulmate? I managed to believe it when I read the book, but Emma in the TV series was not believable as a girl who would turn his head despite him not noticing her for the past four years … zero chemistry as so many others have said, it makes no sense

I thought she was very funny in a subtle, clever way.

He said he had noticed her and he felt the same. Presumably he felt under pressure at uni to be with the pretty popular girls and the night of graduation gave him a fuck it moment and he shot his shot.

I wept at that scene. My heart absolutely broke for Emma.

Presumably he felt under pressure at uni to be with the pretty popular girls

That would be a very unusual thought process for a gorgeous looking guy in his early 20s at university! He said he noticed her, but let’s face it, that was crappy writing because the reality is this Emma would never come up on his radar re her looks and personality.

Dont know you know. There is a lid for every pot. He liked something. His mum kept reminding him that he is a good and nice person and to never lose that. So i dont think his true nature was particularly shallow, however his lifestyle and subsequent actions were. 🤔

I liked the series BUT I thought they were both pretty unbearable. I didn’t find him attractive and his personality was awful so I could understand her attraction to him, and I thought she was grumpy and moany and not stereotypically beautiful enough for him to fall for her when he came across as so shallow. As for Ian! He basically made me clamp shut like a clam. Shudder

Ew he was a walking ick. I didnt think emma would have got with him tbh.

God yes he was awful! He had more oomph about him when she left him and he came back to the flat than he did throughout their cringy relationship!

I seen to remember that when Emma told Dex that she'd noticed him in college, he said he'd seen her too. But when she questioned him about where he'd seen her he sheepishly laughed & she said something like 'oh that's right you didn't'
My interpretation was that he fed her a line to reciprocate but it wasn't true...

I don't actually think he's good looking but I can see how others would find him so. Same with Emma

I kind of want to watch it but have a feeling it’ll irritate me for these reasons

Yeah I agree. If they’d been in the same seminars or on a group project together, taken a random module together, and she’d been being sparky and smart, I can see that catching his attention and then him starting to be interested in her despite his usual type being more obviously attractive.

Love the tv series. It is much better than the film. She is miserable because she is lost work wise and has drifted into a rubbish job. He is drawn to her northern, caustic honesty. She is funny and smart, he fancies her.

She was miserable from the beginning (in the TV series).

Re. The restaurant scene, I think it was filmed in Quaglinos, but it was standing in for the Titanic restaurant in Piccadilly, which was briefly the place to be seen when it first opened - that’s why she mentions it looking like a cruise ship and says something about it hitting an iceberg.

The timing isn’t quite right though, Titanic opened a few years after that ep was set (it would have made more sense for them to be in The Atlantic Bar and Grill which was based in the same hotel, opened that year and was also very fashionable).

Loved it! I loved Emma from the get go, maybe that spontaneous dry off beat sense of humour is my thing too though. I loved the chemistry with the characters. I am now traumatised though.

Yes. They really see each other. I think they see who they can both become, once they have gotten through all their shit and become the people they both want to be. As they agreed ‘they grew up together’.

I've watched a couple of episodes and love Emma, and the whole thing. I don't find it slow at all. She actually reminds me of a good friend of mine I was at university with.

I was reading that casting Emma will pay off commercially, as the series is doing well in south global markets due to the lead.

So I don’t think they made a mistake casting a woman of colour- her casting will only make it more popular with global audiences.

I think her casting, from the beginning, was a very calculated decision. But from a story perspective, it was totally wrong.

Spoilers

Emma was sardonically humorous which I love..

D - Cafe Boulangerie de Paris
E - But how will people know it’s French?

Reading the bride’s name on the wedding invitation - ‘Sylvie Abigail Elizabeth Penelope.. sounds like a ballet class.’